Some newborns are less equal than others?

Darkness Rising: As It Turns Out, Not All Newborns Have a Right to Life
Michael Egnor

If you had any doubt that darkness is overtaking our culture, this should remove it. Last week Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse introduced the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, intended to protect babies who are born during the process of abortion. The bill required physicians to provide babies who survive abortion with the same medical care that would be provided to any newborn. Forty-four senators voted against the bill, which precluded it from being considered for legislation because 60 votes were needed to override the anticipated filibuster. 

An Anti-Infanticide Bill

Sasse’s bill was essentially an anti-infanticide bill. The 44 senators who voted to oppose the bill voted to deny life to children who are born despite the fact that their mothers don’t want them. “You paid for a dead baby, you deserve a dead baby” is the most succinct justification for their opposition to the bill. 

Opponents of the bill argued that it amounts to interference in the medical relationship between a woman and her doctor. Nonsense. Once the baby is alive outside the womb — whether by ordinary childbirth or by a botched abortion — he or she is a newborn, not a “product of conception.” Sasse’s bill merely requires that all newborns — all live babies — receive competent medical care, regardless of the circumstances immediately preceding their birth. 

Two Classes of Newborns

Opponents argue — implicitly, though of course not explicitly — that there are two different classes of newborns: the wanted and the unwanted. They argue that only the wanted deserve medical care. The unwanted have no right to life. 

Opposition to this bill by even one senator would be a sign of moral rot; in a healthy culture, no legislator would dare endorse infanticide. Endorsement of infanticide by nearly half of the Senate is astonishing. 

The culture of death — the dehumanization of the vulnerable and the unwanted — is fast upon us. The rapidity of its advance is hard to believe, even for a cynic like me. If the widespread opposition to Senator Sasse’s simple bill that protects all newborns — wanted and unwanted — doesn’t horrify you, you’re not paying attention.